Broadway's Most Wanted
Page 13
5. THE LION KING
Disney’s phenomenally popular 1994 animated film was adapted by some old friends (film composers Elton John and Hans Zimmer, lyricist Tim Rice, and librettist Irene Mecchi) as well as many new hands. But the guiding hand belonged to director and costume designer Julie Taymor.
While the film of The Lion King is occasionally lovely and visually worthy of the veldt setting, the 1998 Broadway version became a vision of almost unparalleled beauty and creativity. Taymor and the other designers, scenic designer Richard Hudson, and lighting designer Donald Holder, met the cinematic challenges in brilliantly theatrical ways, making the stage show a tribal ritual unfolding as the storytellers enact the tale for us, the audience.
6. FOOTLOOSE
A fin de siécle affection for all things ’80s and kitsch is the only explanation for this dumb year 2000 stage adaptation of the dumb quasi-movie musical hit from 1982. If you care, it’s about a free-spirited kid who’s just gotta dance, and who has the misfortune to move to a town where no one is allowed to dance. No compelling reason is given as to why jitterbugging is ix-nayed, but Bad Preacher Daddy is involved. Let me guess: Since it’s a musical, I bet everybody ends up cutting a big rug at the end. Yes, indeed.
7. THE PRODUCERS
A smash that made New York and the world giddy with smash-hit-itis, The Producers is the stage version of Mel Brooks’s great 1968 film comedy. The changes made to the movie for its adaptation to the musical stage in 2001 are a model example of the genre.
Brooks (and his co-librettist, Thomas Meehan) wisely re-set the tale in 1959, the end of Broadway’s Golden Age, to point up Max Bialystock’s many previous failures (shows like South Passaic and High Button Jews, for example). The songs Brooks added to the show delineated the characters better than dialogue would have, but the real ace in the hole was Susan Stroman’s no-holds-barred direction and choreography. Maxing out her budget, she created one outrageous gag after another, sometimes with the help of the design team (singing pigeons with Nazi armbands) and sometimes with just an outrageous flourish (a chorus girl twisting herself into a swastika at the end of “Springtime for Hitler.”)
8. THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
Jacques Demy’s 1964 musical masterpiece Les Parapluies de Cherbourg is as cinematic a musical as there’s ever been; it’s a superb application of French New Wave film techniques to the movie musical genre. Fifteen years later, it was seen on the stage in New York under its English-language title, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
The score for Umbrellas is all-sung, with much of Michel Legrand’s and Demy’s score featuring standalone songs and recurring musical motifs which predate the European pop-operas to come from the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Boublil and Schonberg. New York’s Public Theater hosted the show, which was staged by Andrei Serban, a director with a noted eye for gorgeous stage pictures. Sheldon Harnick and Charles Burr translated the piece and used its English title, and while many agreed it was good to look at, it couldn’t compare to the riot of color and level of experimentation seen in the movie version.
9. GIGI
Gigi was the Best Picture Oscar winner for 1958, a beautifully stylized bonbon based on Colette’s novel of Gay Paree. A Broadway musical version, offered up in 1973, looked good but offered no improvements on the classic film.
The wondrous Alfred Drake was along to sing the Maurice Chevalier role, and audiences predictably enjoyed watching him “Sank Hay-ven for leetle gaaals,” but aside from Drake and attractive décor, audiences found little to savor. Perhaps the novel’s premise, a girl basically being purchased by an older man, was not a socially acceptable topic for a musical by the 70s.
10. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
Here we go again. Like Gigi, Meet Me in St Louis was an attempt to take a classic MGM film musical and adapt it to the stage. And like Gigi, once again, the result was less than satisfying. Maybe the film’s director, Vincente Minnelli, would have made the difference.
Audiences again saw little need to plunk down big bucks to see a stage show of a film they could easily rent on video, even though the 1989 version looked great and moved well. The additions made to the simple story, like a Halloween Skeleton’s Ball, didn’t help either.
We Sail the Seas
10 Musicals Set on the Water
Tales of the sea often conjure up romantic images of hardy sailors and bloodthirsty pirates—images ideally suited to musical theater. Here are ten musicals that were all wet.
1. SHOW BOAT
The seminal American musical, adapted and produced in 1927, from Edna Ferber’s grand novel. Flo Ziegfeld produced it, and a good thing too, because an ordinary-looking production of this show might have killed it.
Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II forever separated the musical from the operetta by letting the libretto and the songs cue the characters. As much about the Mississippi and, by extension, America as it was about the titular boat, the Cotton Blossom, Show Boat is without question the American theater’s most important musical.
2. THE FROGS
A very loose adaptation of Aristophanes by Burt Shevelove, with songs by Stephen Sondheim, originally performed in the Yale University swimming pool in 1974. It’s supposed to be a spectacle, but with two of the authors of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum on hand, you never know just what kind of spectacle you’ve got. “The time is the present. The place is ancient Greece.”
Dionysos is traveling to the underworld, but gets waylaid by Charon and some frogs while on the river Styx. Or something like that. Then Shakespeare and Shaw start debating the value of art in society. Or something like that. Sondheim squeezes in a gorgeous setting of Shakespeare’s “Fear No More,” and the actors don’t need to shower before they leave.
3. BILLY
A rightly forgotten one-performance bomb, this 1969 rock musical took as its source Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd. Unfortunately, they played it for anti-war counterculture points instead of grasping the political and sexual allegory inherent in the Melville novel. Fortunately, no one cared. When people weren’t looking at Ming Cho Lee’s rope-ladder-playground ship set, they had to focus on the action. Too bad.
4. ANYTHING GOES
When the Lusitania sank, Cole Porter’s idea of a shipwreck musical sank with it. Years later, he wrote a shipboard story instead, and Anything Goes was the result. Great songs and the presence of first-class talent elevated this typical 1930’s screwball farce plot into a classic show.
Ethel Merman was Reno Sweeney, ship’s entertainer and part-time evangelist (so Porter could write a faux-spiritual, “Blow, Gabriel, Blow”) and William Gaxton and Victor Moore were the clowns. The echi-thirties plot involves rich socialites, wacky gangsters, and Chinese guys. It’s more fun than it sounds.
5. BIG RIVER
The great American novel, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was adapted into a Broadway musical in time for the 1984-85 Broadway season, following a gestation period at American Repertory Theater and La Jolla Playhouse. La Jolla’s Artistic Director, Des McAnuff, appealed to country songwriter Roger Miller to supply the score, and Miller’s simple tunes and Spartan lyrics suited the show just fine.
Set largely on Huck and Jim’s raft, the show won seven Tony Awards (including the first Scenic Design Tony awarded to a woman, for Heidi Landesman’s brilliant evocation of the Mighty Mississippi; the river became almost a character itself) and ran for 1,005 performances on Broadway.
6. DOMES AT SEA
This ultra-spoofy 1968 off-Broadway musical hit was about, well, showbiz and boats. Bernadette Peters made her first big splash (ahem) in this homage to shipboard musicals, à la Anything Goes, and backstage musicals, à la 42nd Street. A musical set on a ship has to perform on a ship for real after that nasty ol’ Depression tears the theater down. Sweet chorus nobody Ruby (Keeler?) saves the day, with the help of her Uncle Sam.
7. THE NEW MOON
This delightful Broadway operetta from
1928 is perhaps the last of the great “Broadway operettas.” Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein II gave audiences one of the strongest scores in history, with hits like “Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise,” “Lover, Come Back to Me,” “Wanting You,” and the classic march “Stouthearted Men.” The typically grandiose plot concerns dashing French revolutionaries, beautiful maidens, and terror and heroism on the high seas, as the New Moon sails from France to the Louisiana territory.
8. SAIL AWAY
Noel Coward’s 1961 shipboard musical comedy starred the priceless Elaine Stritch as Miss Paragon, the put-upon cruise director aboard the S.S. Coronia. Stritch’s part was built up in previews, when it was apparent that a darker subplot, involving an unhappy wife on a solo cruise, was not working. Coward did his usual all-me writing job and was greatly amused when critics attacked the piece for being paper thin and almost plotless, when Coward obviously had been writing fluff all along.
9. TITANIC
A somewhat troubled show in previews, due to its technical requirements, this elegant setting of the doomed ocean liner’s only voyage survived much tinkering to win the Tony for Best Musical in 1997 (and, FYI, it came out before the movie did).
Composer-lyricist Maury Yeston and librettist Peter Stone took characters from history (the Astors, ship’s architect Andrews) and invented others drawn from history (crew members, three Irish girls named Kate). Yeston’s music soared, particularly in the choral writing, and praise was unanimous for Stewart Laing’s marvelous geometric sets, which tilted ominously as the evening went on.
10. MUTINY!
This middling British pop opera from 1985 was based on Mutiny on the Bounty. Written by English pop artist/actor David Essex and Richard Crane, and starring Essex, it played for a year and a half in London’s West End. A truly spectacular set and good intentions notwithstanding, if a show has a song called “Breadfruit,” and features an exclamation point in the title, and doesn’t take place in Oklahoma, then you’re asking for it.
I’m a Bad, Bad Man
10 Great Musical Villains
Most musicals are a fight between the forces of good and evil. Here are ten musical baddies, all wretched, all memorable, all juicy.
1. JUDGE TURPIN, SWEENEY TODD
One of the creepiest characters to ever grace a musical, Sweeney Todd’s Judge Turpin is a miserable, pious lech who ruins an entire family before meeting his bloody comeuppance. Turpin condemns barber Todd to prison in Australia and rapes his wife, driving her insane. Todd finally slits the Judge’s throat as he sits in Todd’s barber chair.
2. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Gaston Leroux’s gothic villain is a hideously deformed creature living in the bowels of the Paris Opera House. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1985 musical version, masterfully directed by Harold Prince, presents the Phantom, memorably portrayed by Michael Crawford in London and New York, in all his dark glory. Though physically repellent, The Phantom harbors a deep romantic passion for art and beauty. Driven by an obsessive love for opera ingenue Christine Daae, he extorts, murders, and kidnaps to feed his neurasthenic needs.
3. JUD FRY, OKLAHOMA!
With his physical unpleasantness, remote personality, and dank hideout, Oklahoma!’s Jud Fry is a sort of cousin to the Phantom. Jud, Aunt Eller’s ranch hand, lives out back in the smokehouse. Also like the Phantom, he has his own obsession, this one with Eller’s niece, Laurey. Not so much villainous as just plain creepy in the first act, his rage at losing Laurey to cowboy Curly turns truly dangerous in the second act, as he sets fire to a haystack during Curly and Laurey’s wedding shivaree.
4. MISS HANNIGAN, ANNIE
She’s often hung over, she smokes like a chimney, and she likes to spank her charges. Well, Annie’s Miss Hannigan certainly wins no points for Mother of the Year. And yet, in her greatest act of villainy, that’s exactly what the lousy orphanage moll tries to do: Pass a friend off as orphan Annie’s mother to get next to Daddy Warbucks and claim his fortune. Every actress, from Dorothy Loudon, Nell Carter, and June Havoc onstage, to Carol Burnett onscreen, and Kathy Bates on television, has gotten her Depression-era grasping for the good life on “Easy Street” just right.
5. MORDRED, CAMELOT
At least Mordred comes by his bitterness honestly: He’s King Arthur’s illegitimate son. (That must look awful on a resume.) As soon as he’s an adult, or what passed for an adult in the days of Lerner and Loewe’s 1960 musical Camelot, he declares “Fie on Goodness” and proceeds to take up arms in protest of his father’s moral code. Purely distilled by Alan Jay Lerner from Mallory and T.H. White, he’s easily interpreted as the Nazi element threatening Arthur’s democracy.
6. BILL SIKES, OLIVER!
Bill Sikes is a typically Dickensian villain, and he’s given appropriately rude and crude music to establish him in Lionel Bart’s colorful score for Oliver! Bart disobeyed many of the American ground rules for musical writing, and simply had the murderous Sikes thunder on, stand in a doorway, and tell everyone how awful he is. We see just how awful at show’s end when he murders his Nancy.
7. GENERAL BULLMOOSE, LI’L ABNER
The Li’l Abner comics were full of colorful characters blown up from reality. General Bullmoose was creator Al Capp’s ruthless capitalist, an Eisenhower-era baddie derived from Ike’s Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson (“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”). Bullmoose (about whom is sung, “What’s good for General Bullmoose/Is good for the U.S.A!”) wants to corner the market on Yokumberry tonic and is prepared to kill Li’l Abner to do so, but he’s hyp-mo-tized by Evil Eye Fleegle into admitting the truth. A typically satirical end for this Cappian creation.
8. SEN. BILLBOARD RAWKINS, FIMAN’S RAINBOW
Not too far from Bullmoose on the demagogue scale, Sen. Billboard Rawkins was a caricature of reconstructionist Senators Bilbo and Rankin. In Finian’s Rainbow, he’s a buffoon who wants to evict the honest sharecroppers of Rainbow Valley from their land in order to profit from the wonders of uranium. He’s turned black (oh, great) by a wish on an enchanted crock of gold, and after walking a mile (and dancing “The Begat”) in the sharecroppers’ shoes, he repents and spreads goodwill to the folks of the Valley.
9. INSPECTOR JAVERT, LES MISÉRABLES
A special sub-category of villain, the principled villain, is headed by Les MisÉrables’ Inspector Javert. In every incarnation of Hugo’s epic tale, Javert is a single-minded nemesis to the hero, Jean Valjean. As Valjean seeks to put his past life of petty crime behind him, Javert stays on his trail, doggedly pursuing his elusive prey regardless of circumstance. “My duty’s to the law, you have no rights,” he sings as he first corners Valjean, in the 1985 musical smash. When, near the end of the musical, Valjean saves Javert’s life and escapes again, Javert, unable to cope with the perversions of justice and logic, takes his own life.
10. EVEHARRINGTON, APPLAUSE
“Eve! You four-star bitch! Thank you!” So cries Margo Channing at the conclusion of Applause, the 1970 musical version of the legendary story and film All About Eve. Eve Harrington is a schemer, plain and simple, determined to become a famous actress at any cost. She wins the trust of her heroine, Margo, then proceeds to win almost everything else in Margo’s life, ruthlessly climbing the ladder of success all the way to the Tony Awards, where Margo, prodded out of complacency by Eve’s scheming, finally realizes that her most prized possession is the love and trust of her man.
Blow, Gabriel, Blow
Depictions of Faith in Broadway Musicals
It is a topic as elemental as existence itself. It is one of the main subjects in the American consciousness. It’s religious faith, and many long to see honest depictions of faith and religion on the musical stage. Here are ten musicals that vary in their attitudes toward faith, but present an honest witness.
1. THE GOSPEL AT COLONUS
Avant-garde theater artist Lee Breuer came about as close to a mainstream Broadway musical as he ever will with th
is 1988 Broadway effort with music by Bob Telson. Breuer’s idea was a setting of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus as told by a Pentecostal Sunday service, a melding of the Christian faith and the Greek catharsis. The Gospel at Colonus premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in 1983.
As presided over by the magisterial Morgan Freeman, the evening was praised in concept but left most reviewers scratching their heads to comprehend the meaning. The main pleasures, besides Freeman, were Telson’s music, the predictably fine Gospel singers (massed choirs and soloists), and Alison Yerxa’s impressive church altar set.
2. LOST IN THE STARS
Adapted from Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country, Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s 1949 musical Lost in the Stars was Weill’s last musical and a searing examination of faith in crisis and hope for change fueled by racial injustice. Reverend Stephen Kumalo, whose son, Absalom, is missing, journeys from his home in the South African hills to the shanty-towns and city streets of Johannesburg to find him, fearing that Absalom has lost his way, both spiritually and physically. The show as a whole was appreciated but not raved over, but the score served Paton’s minimalist prose well, particularly in the haunting “Train to Johannesburg” and the title song, in which Reverend Kumalo questions his faith in an absentee God.